November 2009 Archives

While on Thanksgiving vacation I happened to read Bley et sa bande by Jeanne de Cavally. Good for practicing French, thought not really a compelling book.  It is a series of vignettes of life in the 1940s colonial period for a group of boys living on the coast, near the port.  The boys have small adventures... think Tom Sawyer, but very short and simple.  Good reading material for a village library, but published in 1985, the book is certainly nowhere available.  Seems like someone should be figuring out how to get all these books back in print at $3 each.  Book flood time!

From the New York Times, some straightforward muckraking:

Several times every year, Teodoro Nguema Obiang arrives at the doorstep of the United States from his home in Equatorial Guinea, on his way to his $35 million estate in Malibu, his fleet of luxury cars, his speedboats and private jet. And he is always let into the country. The nation's doors are open to Mr. Obiang, the agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its ruler, even though federal law enforcement officials believe "most if not all" of his wealth comes from corruption related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents. And they are open despite a federal law and a presidential proclamation that prohibit corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving an American visa. Susan Pittman, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement in the State Department, said she was prohibited from discussing specific visa decisions. But other former and current State Department officials said that Equatorial Guinea's close ties to the American oil industry were the reason for the lax enforcement of the law. Production of the country's nearly 400,000 barrels of oil a day is dominated by American companies like ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon.

People are always asking for impact evaluation... it's hard for libraries, which have such diffuse impacts.  But it is hard for clean water, too, as this extract from a relatively recent article suggests:

What Works in Fighting Diarrheal Diseases in Developing Countries? A Critical Review -- Alix Peterson Zwane and Michael Kremer, The World Bank Research Observer, 2007, 10.

Because of the lack of evidence on effectiveness and the maintenance challenge, the case has not been made for prioritizing communal rural water infrastructure for fighting diarrheal disease. Investing in piped water and sanitation in areas where that is feasible and expanding the provision of standard child health interventions have both been shown to work. Finding ways to effectively promote handwashing and point-of-use water treatment also seems a priority. In some circumstances, there may be a strong case for investing in rural water infrastructure for other reasons, and in some environments such infrastructure may have important health benefits. But the case for prioritizing communal water infrastructure will need to be made rather than assumed.

Chapter 1:  Stumble across book that is *exactly* what you had been hoping someone would write.  Order book through Interlibrary loan.
Chapter 2:  Get book at library.  Undergraduate students whisper, mockingly, as they walk past the middle-aged man standing on lawn, reading obscure book, in French, detailing life and times of Pierre Boisson, governor general of French West Africa during the Vichy period.
Chapter 3: Have to go back to work telling undergraduate students that they cannot be exempted from certain requirements.  Not revenge, exactly, but do not feel empathy.  Wait all day, patiently, until kids are asleep.  Immediately pull out book, read (OK, skim) all the way through.  Fascinating.
Chapter 4: Sigh.  The book was great, but didn't have what I really needed.  Hats off to historian Pierre Ramognino for working through the archives.  Maybe need to go to Aix en Provence myself to look through archives.  There are worse fates.

Ever since that Saturday Night Live send-up of NPR ... a long time ago... two women talking about onions, in very quiet voices, with little inflection, is my recollection, ever since then I've never really wondered what the NPR people look like (I made an exception for Judy Swallow at BBC), but one reporter has always captured my attention, just because of the way she says, "from Dakaaahhhhrrrr, this is ..." and then some name that strikes me as possibly being from any continent.  (Well, she's a great reporter too.)  So, I was browsing allafrica.com, and who pops up as one of their reporters.... HER!!!! And her name is Ofeibea Quist-Arcton!  She's in the photo with AllAfrica President Amadou Mahtar Ba.

I found this on the library bookshelf and checked it out.  I'd never read anything by Fugard... for some reason (him being a playwright, and I not particularly enjoying the conventions of theater) I'd always thought of him as intimidating.  But the movie version I had seen, at FESPACO in Burkina actually, and it was a fantastic movie most of the way through, and so when I saw that Fugard was the author of the book I said to myself, "This has got to be even better than the movie."  And sure enough, much better.  A hard challenge for a writer: take a young man grown up a hardened street thug, put a baby accidentally in his hands one night, and record the "inner life" as it evolves with the facts of living in the world.  But isn't this the challenge that writers should be taking?  (Compare, e.g., with the challenges Tom Wolfe sets for himself...)  It is seriously depressing, but invigorating because of the sharp insight and the excellent writing.  The ending is completely different from the movie, and far better.

From an article in the New York Times:

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao pledged to grant African countries $10 billion in low-interest development loans over the next three years, to establish a $1 billion loan program for small and medium-size businesses, and to forgive the remaining debt on certain interest-free loans that China previously granted less-developed African nations. Mr. Wen made the pledge in an address to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, held in the Egyptian city of Sharm el Sheik. The $10 billion in new loans is double the amount China pledged at the last meeting in 2006.

How much is $10 billion?  Well, at $5,000 to establish a village library, and another $5,000 to endow it for librarian salary and incidentals, about 100,000 libraries could be established and operated for five years... for $1 billion.  Burkina Faso has about 8,000 villages, and maybe 5,000 are big enough to benefit from a library (i.e. have a primary school).  So if sub-Saharan Africa has about 450 million people in rural areas, and Burkina 10 million, Africa is 45 times Burkina, so 45 times 5,000 is 225,000.  So under $3 billion is enough to cover pretty much all of rural Africa.  The problem is that refurbishing an existing building to be a library and buying local books and local shelving and chairs generates no demand for anything Chinese... and most Chinese villages lack libraries themselves... so... ain't gonna happen.  I'm not complaining or blaming... just saying...

She's a good writer, no doubt about it.  But this rather forced novel probably would have most appeal to teenagers who themselves have what we might call "Africa Identity Crisis"... that is, they grow up in U.S. or U.K. and no longer know what it means to be comfortable with identity as African.  True to her own life experience, Emecheta guides the reader away from simple resolutions: identity is more complicated than eating fufu, and the responsible thing to do is encourage, enable, but also question... so a great novel for a multicultural class in high school!

I found myself very immersed in the characters until mid-way through, when the sister disappears and Chester goes off to Nigeria... a trip the reader anticipates weith dread... it turns out as bad as one expected, but somehow there is no emotional cost to Chester or the reader... somehow Emecheta disengages the intensity- like I said, good for high school, but not compelling for the experienced reader.

From the AILA Africa Ren Newsletter - October 2009

Oxfam Report: West Africa's Literacy Challenge "From Closed Books to Open Doors: West Africa's Literacy Challenge" calculates the scale of the literacy crisis in West Africa, and explores what should be done about it. West Africa has the lowest literacy rates in the world. The report is launched in the context of the 2009 Global Week of Action on education, which focuses on literacy and lifelong learning, and the UN international conference on adult education, taking place in 2009 for the first time in 12 years. In West Africa, there are 65 million young people and adults who cannot read and write - more than 40% of the population - and 14 million children aged 7 to 12 who are not in primary school. Illiteracy is shutting these people off from the jobs, economic opportunities, good health and engagement in democracy. The consequences for them, their communities and their countries, is devastating. But the literacy crisis can be dealt with, and the doors to these rights opened. In the formal education system, there must be an effort to fill the gap in trained teachers, calculated at over three quarters of a million trained teachers. At the same time, governments need to put much greater priority on providing real opportunities to learn to read and write outside school, such as in adult literacy classes and youth training centres.

Read the recommendations and download the report here: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/education/closed-books-open-doors-west-africa.html

It is a good report, but honestly, how can you write thirty single-spaced pages about literacy and never mention libraries?????

Kate Parry writes in: One reason why girls drop out of school in Uganda, and doubtless elsewhere in Africa, is the difficulty that they have handling their monthly periods. Sanitary towels are too expensive for many of them, and without adequate protection, they suffer excruciating embarrassment. Many simply skip school for one week every month, and some drop out altogether. 

Shelley Jones, a researcher at Kitengesa who worked with and through the library, identified this problem, and Afri-Pads was established to address it. Its managers, Pauls Grinwalds and Sophia Klumpp, employed a single tailor, a graduate of Kitengesa Comprehensive Secondary School, early in 2009 and set up a workshop for her in Kitengesa Trading Centre. Together they developed a reusable sanitary towel that could be sold at a price rural Ugandan school girls could afford. The demand for the product has grown rapidly, so by June they were employing four tailors (one of whom is a former Kitengesa Library Scholar) and knew they would soon need more space.

The Kitengesa Community Library has been able to help. The library was initially established in a single room building on the school's compound, but when in 2008 ittowards a computer centre the decision was made to put up a new building to accommodate the centre and a community hall as well. The library has recently moved into the new building, so the old one is available for Afri-Pads to use as a larger workshop. Afri-Pads is paying rent, which is being shared between the library and the school, and so everyone is benefitting-and the new library will be used by Afri-Pads as a venue for workshops on sexual health. The pictures show Afri-Pads' tailors in their new space.

For more information, see www.afripads.com and www.kitengesalibrary.org.

A very sad article from The Graphic in Ghana.. the three village libraries supported by FAVL apparently see more users and encourage more reading than Accra Library!

80 Per Cent Of Books At Accra Library Outdated Date:27th July 2009 It is estimated that about 80 per cent of the books at the Accra Regional Library at the Ghana Library Board is outdated. "Most of the books we have in the library are as old as the library itself," the Regional Librarian, Mr Adjei Apenteng, told the Daily Graphic. He said restocking of the library had been done in the past by the government and the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), adding that although others used to donate to the board, they had stopped, leaving the government and the GETFund alone to support it. According to him, the library had initiated moves to get computerised as part of the efforts to bring it up to standard. Mr Apenteng noted that patronage of the library was poor and that it was only during examination time that patronage shot up. "Even with that people come with their own materials to read. People doing professional examinations also utilise the facility," he said. Statistics made available to the Daily Graphic indicate that while 221 people registered in 2006, 179 registered in 2007, with 143 registering in 2008. In addition, 3,187 books were borrowed in 2006, while 2,768 and 2,032 were borrowed in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Mr Apenteng said as part of efforts to encourage reading in schools, the Ghana Library Board had started piloting the mobile library system under which vans with books moved to schools. He said the mobile library system, which collapsed about 25 years ago, was being piloted in the 10 regions to whip up the interest of reading in children. He said the board was using vans provided by UNESCO and could expand the services if it owned more vans. He said sometimes the board bought books to stock the library but noted that some of the people who patronised the library pilfered the books. He urged parents to encourage their children to read. Mr Apenteng also encouraged district assemblies to establish libraries at the local level.

Why be able to read?  So that you can write a better will and enforce it...

Mendenhall E, Muzizi L, Stephenson R, Chomba E, Haworth A, Allen S. 2007. "Property Grabbing and Will Writing in Lusaka, Zambia: An Examination of Wills of HIV Infected Cohabiting Couples." AIDS Care 19(3): 369-74.

High rates of HIV and poverty place women in a precarious economic situation in Lusaka, Zambia. Mortality from HIV infection is high, leaving many households single headed and creating almost a half a million orphans. One of the most prevalent forms of gender violence that creates poverty in women is when the male's family claims the property of the deceased from the widow and the children. The Zambia-Emory HIV Research Project collected 184 wills from individuals in monogamous unions where one or both of the individuals were HIV-positive. Despite the fact that many wills specifically stated that their extended family was not allowed to tamper with their possessions in the event of death, property grabbing proved to be a prevalent and difficult issue in Lusaka. In order to improve the lives of widowed women in Lusaka, the government and other civic and non-governmental organisations must inform women of their rights to own and protect their land and other assets in the event of their husbands' death, an issue of increasing importance in the area of HIV/AIDS.

Howl's Moving Castle... I'd seen the movie by Hayao Miyazaki- does any contemporary parent have an excuse not to have "indoctrinated" his children into Miyazaki's beautiful films?- but was not aware that it was actually based on a novel by Diana Wynne Jones. Since one of my kids was reading it picked it up and read it over two nights.  Beautifully written, and very incisive in what it means to be getting older...

On August 6, 2009, a team of eleven UgCLA members, together with Katie Uher from Ready for Reading in Rwanda, set off for the 6th Pan African Conference on Reading for All in Dar es Salaam, together with a side-trip to Lushoto for a small conference with Tanzanian library promoters. The trip was funded in large part by generous contributions from Ugandan donors: Fountain Publishers, MK Publishers, Mukono Bookshope, and Dr. Alan Shonubi, Chair of the National Library Board.

It was a great adventure for the Ugandans, several of whom had never been to Tanzania before, and a great inspiration to the Tanzanians whom we met in Lushoto, for community libraries are now far better developed in Uganda than they are in Tanzania. As for the Dar conference, it provided unrivalled opportunities for making connections, and the team's presentation of UgCLA's work was very well received.

The presenter is Augustine Napagi in the photo, who described how he got children in the Kabubbu Community Library to contribute stories, which the librarians wrote down and, with pictures from the children and help from a professional illustrator and a printer, turned into a book. The book , called Essanyu l'yabato (Joy of Children) is  a valuable addition to children's literature in Luganda--of which there is not nearly enough. Better still, the project was financed with one of the small grants of $1000 that UgCLA distributed in 2008, from funds provided by the US Embassy in Kampala. One of UgCLA's Board Members, George Openjuru, hopes to extend this kind of book production work to other libraries.

Our only regret is that the next Pan African Conference on Reading for All is to be in Botswana--too far for even UgCLA's intrepid librarians to travel by bus.

Kate Parry
18 October 2009

Click on the image for a larger version....

You can read the details here, look for article on left hand side... Jen is working with FAVL to get a library started in the village where she has been posted the past couple of years...

Chris posts about carrying water... and new technology, and Mr. Luddite here had to write a somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment... it's a fascinating issue...